


Like You Could

by trash4ficsaboutlurv



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Sam as the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2018-10-23 02:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10710594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash4ficsaboutlurv/pseuds/trash4ficsaboutlurv
Summary: A very long while ago, someone asked me to write an AU where Sam is the Winter Soldier. As most of you know, I do not write AUs, nor do I read AUs, so this is going to be QUITE the challenge. Still, I had some ideas come together and decided to give this my best shot. To that anon, thanks and hope you see this!





	1. Chapter 1

EIGHT MONTHS AGO

Steve’s palms were flushed and damp. He was always a little nervous at therapy. His therapist, Dr. Ajayi was a small, black woman with chin length dreads and dime-sized dimples in her dark cheeks who wore soft cashmere sweaters and floor length skirts. Her whole demeanor said, _Be calm. Be kind. Be patient._ Which was also her constant advice to Steve. That he should be calmer, kinder, and more patient with himself.

“I still dream about him—them,” he admitted to his hands.

“Who, Steve?”

“Peggy. Buck.” He cleared his throat. “Sam.” He struggled not to clench his fists or run out of the room. He didn’t want to betray the fight-or-flight response playing out in his head.

“Is Sam the ‘him,’ Steve?” Dr. Ajayi set her pen on her clipboard as if to say, _I’m not your therapist right now. I’m your friend._

“What?”

“Before you said ‘them,’ you said ‘him.’ Is Sam ‘him’?”

Steve kept his hands loose. “I dream about all of them,” he said. “It’s like…It’s like they’re on the other side of a thin curtain. I can see their shadows. I can hear their voices. They’re right fucking there.” Steve cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

Dr. Ajayi smiled at him. She was constantly reminding him he didn’t need to apologize for cursing. “What do you want from them?” she asked.

Steve frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what do you want from Peggy, Sam, and Bucky? In your dream? Do you want them to see you? To speak to you? Do you want to join them?”

Steve paused. This was a trap. He could tell from the way Dr. Ajayi leaned forward, her lips slightly parted. She was anticipating his answer. His answer would _mean_ something. He shook his head and crossed his arms. “I want them to go away.”

 _Like I could,_ Sam’s shadowy self whispered from just beyond the veil.

THE PRESENT

Steve’s hadn’t jolted out of sleep this morning from a nightmare. Dread hadn’t been sitting on his chest waiting for him to notice he couldn’t breathe. His sheets weren’t drenched in sweat or tangled around his legs like he’d clawed his way out from under them. And he couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think he’d shouted in his sleep last night. At least, none of his neighbors had thumped on the walls of his apartment, so either they’d grown a lot more tolerant of a war vet with some demons or that war vet had actually had a full night of restful, healing sleep.

_Well, don’t that just beat all?_

Steve sat on the edge of his bed, his feet on the cool, wooden floor and decided that today, he wouldn’t have a spiral. He wouldn’t entertain wistful daydreams so intoxicatingly rich with details from his life before that he’d undo weeks of work with Dr. Ajayi. He would count his blessings – that he had his health, that he was reclaiming his mental stability, that he – okay, he wouldn’t count his blessings. It was way too easy to run out of things and end up in a worse place than he started. No, he would notice the little things.

Like the cool spring morning unfolding as he ran along the National Mall. Like the sky ripening from a deep pink to a hazy purple to a clear blue. The way his lungs and legs just seemed to know what to do as he ran along. The way there weren’t any annoying bright-and-early tourists blocking his running route.

 He saw a jogger up ahead and for some reason – maybe just because Dr. Ajayi said he needed to work on interacting with people without his fists – he called out as he passed, “On your left.” Nothing fancy. He wasn’t trying to make lifelong friends, here. And as first attempts went, not bad for him.

The woman turned slightly, her face flushed and a smile already prepared for Steve. She looked familiar, but one second Steve was just abreast of her and the next his legs had carried him almost ten meters ahead. Where had he seen her before? he wondered. A barista at his local coffeeshop? Maybe he’d run past her before on a different day. He racked his brain just for something to do as he continued his route.

From his very brief glance at her, he’d noticed that she was pretty – in the way that most young joggers are. She was on the taller side; blond hair pulled into a bouncing ponytail; cheeks flushed a warm, inviting pink; wiry like maybe she took a kickboxing class once or twice a week. Not a face that was too terribly memorable, but all the same, Steve prided himself on his face recognition skills. Back before the serum – back when he hadn’t had all that many skills to brag about – never forgetting a face had ranked high on his list of talents – just above drawing and right below loving the hell out of – no.

His heart did that weird stuttering thing it did whenever he thought about that and he shook his head – like a dog with water in his ears.

When Steve first came off the ice, Fury and his team had run dozens of tests on him. Steve had had a little too much on his mind at the time to ask why they needed his blood and hair, or what possible use they could have knowing his mother’s favorite color was dandelion yellow, or why they made him do the army physical when they knew he was a serum-enhanced super soldier for whom pushups and sprints would hardly register.

He wasn’t as out of it when they hooked him up to a machine that recorded his stress levels while a doctor – Ellen? Karen? Helen! – asked him questions. About fighting the Red Skull, about putting the plane down, about – swerve, Steve. When they asked about _that_ , Steve’s heart had done that weird, stuttering thing and the machines had started beeping like crazy and Helen had frowned at her clipboard. She had rattled off some complicated explanation to Fury, who had nodded and clapped Steve’s shoulder and said, “It’s alright, Rogers. Pain don’t last always” like that meant a damn thing when panic had draped its icy arms around Steve and started squeezing his chest so he couldn’t breathe.

Dr. Ajayi had since told Steve that fighting his panic attacks only exacerbated them and instead of getting angry that they were happening, he should be kind and gentle with himself until the panic subsided. Which had been very helpful. She also encouraged Steve to do some investigative digging and explore his triggers. Which Steve had put firmly in the Not Helpful column. Because if there was one thing he knew from being out in the field, it was that digging and prodding at open wounds was a sure way to get gangrene and die. And also, it just fucking hurt.

Steve was almost too absorbed in this line of thought to notice he was coming up on the woman jogger again. Her blond ponytail gleamed in the morning sunlight, its bounce hypnotizing. But no sooner had Steve noticed her ponytail than he was cruising by with another “On your left.”

“Got it,” she called out and there was definitely a smile in her voice. 

Steve wondered if this counted toward his therapy goal this week: to talk to one non-SHIELD, non-customer service person this week. Dr. Ajayi had been very clear that it required at least one outreach statement from Steve, followed by a response from his target person, followed by closing remarks from Steve. Steve had been feeling particularly waspish during their last session and he asked snarkily if perhaps he should prepare something beforehand and give the target some cue cards. Dr. Ajayi, who never once lost her patience with Steve, just smiled gently and said, “If it helps you to write something down first, by all means.” Like he wasn’t being a total asshole. It very effectively took the bark out of him.

Anyway, he needed closing remarks with the jogger woman for it to count. Usually Steve would stop running now, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to try to get in one last “On your left” maybe said with a tone of farewell to signify ‘closing remarks.’ Steve rolled his eyes. If his buddies could see him now. They’d fallen all over themselves back when Steve was skinny and asthmatic and without a single ounce of suaveness or _je ne sais quoi_ in his whole body. They’d think it was doubly funny that he could be so awkward in his big, “sexy” body. That’s what they’d always called post-serum Steve, “sexy” but in quotes. In italics. Not to be taken seriously. Well, except when Sam said it.

Steve waited for his heart to fuck up on him from that casual mention of him – his actual name even – but his heart kept on beating – strong and clear. There. Steve had had one direct thought about him without his heart exploding.

Best not to push it though.

Better just to think about finding jogger woman again. Ah, there she was.

Steve grinned as he closed the distance between them. It felt a little like old times. Well, the new times, post-serum but pre-frozen, when he would run footraces with the other Howling Commandoes in France and the Commandos would get so mad because Steve was smug as hell about outrunning them.

“You know, that serum has turned you into such an ass,” Bucky would say with a tone ratio of about 60% annoyance, 30% fondness, and 10% I-can’t-believe-my-skinny-best-friend-is-now-a-fucking-super-soldier-hero. Buck tried to hide that 10%, but Steve knew him too well. Knew him well enough not to hold the shock and jealousy against him, either, because it was just an adjustment. At the end of the day, Bucky wanted what was best for Steve, same as always.

“On your left,” Steve sang for a third time, breezing past his running partner.

“I could have tripped you just now!” she shouted at his back. “I didn’t have to play nice!”

Steve grinned. He wanted to turn and start running backwards, to wink at her as he showed off a little. It’s what he would have done during the war. But he didn’t. It was enough to know he still had that kind of playful impulse left in him, that it hadn’t remained frozen in the arctic or worse, fallen off the side of a mountain.

Steve did another two loops just for the hell of it. This was probably what Dr. Ajayi had meant when she said Steve was due for some good days. Hell, he would take this good morning, even if the rest of the day went to shit. Steve slowed down as he noticed the lady jogger again, this time over by a tree stretching. She had one knee pulled all the way into her chest and her eyes were closed. Steve watched her as she wobbled ever so slightly, like a thin sapling in a breeze.

She opened her eyes and smiled. “Hi.”

Steve smiled back. “Hi. Sorry about before. It’s just, you look so familiar. Have we met before?”

She wrinkled her nose, still smiling. “Are you using a line on me, Steve Rogers?”

“How do you—” Steve stopped. Stupid question. “A line?” he asked instead.

She peered at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Guess not.” She let her foot drop. White block letters spelled out CIA on the front of her blue sweatshirt. “You have seen me around, actually. I’m your—

“Neighbor!” Steve remembered all at once. “You live down the hall.”

“Sharon,” she said.

Steve gestured at her shirt. “I thought CIA agents were a little more hush-hush.”

Sharon glanced down at her sweatshirt like she’d forgotten what it said. “Oh yeah, this is, uh, this is a joke between some work friends.”

“You’re a nurse, right?” She’d always worn scrubs every time Steve had seen her. And her hair had always been down.

Steve’s phone chirped. Natasha with a new mission. Steve smiled apologetically at Sharon. “I, uh, have to go.”

“Hero work?” Sharon asked.

Steve nodded. “It was nice talking to you,” he added, remembering his ‘closing remarks’. Dr. Ajayi would be so proud.

“Yeah, I’ll see you around.” She pulled her other knee up to her chest and Steve turned toward the curb, where he could see Natasha’s silly, flashy car pulling up. “Oh, and Steve--” Sharon called. “I can hear your music playing in your apartment sometimes. You should think about listening to something produced after the thirties. Some Evanescence or Beyoncé.”

Steve pulled out his little notebook and wrote down both those names phonetically. “I’ll add them to the list.”

“Anyone know where the Smithsonian is?” Natasha called from the car. “I’m here to pick up a fossil.”

“That’s my ride,” Steve said.

Sharon smiled over Natasha. “I guess you can’t run everywhere.”

“No, you cannot.” Steve slid into Nat’s car and pulled on his safety belt. (Nat drove like a woman possessed.) “Nice running with you though.”

“Was that you running ‘with’ me or ‘against’?” Sharon laughed.

Steve shrugged. “Maybe you can teach me how to run _with_ someone some time.” The words just fell out of his mouth, reckless and bold.

Sharon smoothed her ponytail and grinned. “See you around, Rogers.”

As Natasha pulled the car away, she was looking at the side of Steve’s face. “She was cute.”

“You gonna seduce her, too?” Steve asked. Every single woman Nat had tried to set Steve up with – every single one – the moment he passed on her, Nat swooped in and had sex with them. It was as amusing as it was annoying.

“Maybe,” Nat said

 

SIX MONTHS AGO

Steve didn’t know why he did it to himself, why he visited the Smithsonian. It only unstitched his wounds. To see pictures of the Commandoes, to see Bucky and Sam, to hear the museum voiceover say in a dispassionate voice that Bucky and Sam were the only ones in the unit to give their lives. Bucky hadn’t given his life. It had been taken. And Sam – well – Steve tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. It always came up if he thought about how Sam died, how it was all Steve’s fault, even if Sam had quite literally given his life. Sam was selfless like that. A good man through and through.

Steve wouldn’t wish his own predicament on anyone in the world, but he wondered if maybe Bucky or Sam would have traded places with him. Alive in the future, but at least alive. Not somewhere in a ravine, broken and buried.

There was a cardboard cutout of Sam, Steve, and Bucky right at the entrance of the exhibit. Steve remembered when Peggy had taken the picture. She had said that she wanted a photo of her boys. Sam was in the middle with one arm thrown over Steve’s shoulder, the other around Bucky’s. His head was tilted down and he was laughing; Steve was looking down at Sam laughing too, and Bucky was turned away from them, a bright smile on his face. Sam was out-of-his-mind drunk when Peggy took that shot. He had tried to beat Steve in a drinking contest, even after Steve insisted it wasn’t a fair match. Bucky was looking away to call Morita to lend a hand because Sam was a lot heavier than he looked.

The caption just read, _Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes (his childhood friend), and Sam Wilson (member of the Commandoes) the night before the invasion of the Red Skull’s camp._

It was the last picture that Bucky and Sam would ever take.

Steve gritted his teeth to keep from crying.

Natasha called Steve’s weekly trips to the museum a “sadness errand” – like his trips to the VA to talk to WWII vets or his visits to the hospital to see Peggy, who often didn’t remember he’d come off the ice.

Dr. Ajayi wouldn’t say one way or the other if Steve should stop going to the museum. “Do you like going?” she asked.

Steve shook his head.

“Do you feel like you’re honoring them by going?”

Steve took a deep breath. “I feel like…” He paused. “I have to.”

Dr. Ajayi wrote something down. “Can you describe other things that you feel like you ‘have to’ do. Similar compulsions. It could be anything.”

“Eat,” Steve said. “Sleep. Fight.”

“Fight who, Steve?”

“Bad people.”

“Okay.” Dr. Ajayi pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Does going to the museum give you relief from the ‘have to’ feeling?”

Steve frowned.

“When we eat,” Dr. Ajayi explained. “Our bodies reward us with feel-good hormones. When we sleep, our bodies give us a rested feeling. When you fight the bad people, maybe it feels like you’ve created justice in the world or exacted revenge. Do you feel there is a reward, a sense of relief or an easing of tension, a granting of satisfaction from your visits to the museum?”

“No,” Steve said. None of those words worked. He closed his eyes. “It’s more like…it’s more like when I did communion in church with my ma.”

Dr. Ajayi raised her eyebrows. “Going to the museum – seeing Bucky, Sam, and the others memorialized and historicized – gives you a similar feeling to communion in church?” She paused. “I just want to make sure I’m hearing you right.”

Steve nodded.

“Okay, Steve. Thank you for sharing that with me. I know it must have been difficult.”

“Should I stop?” Steve asked, getting to the heart of why he brought it up in the first place. He wanted her professional intervention. He wanted her to explain to him why he needed to go there when all it did was carve up his insides.

“Do you want to?” she asked.

“I can’t.”

“But do you want to?”

Steve closed his eyes again.

“Find out what you want, Steve. And if it doesn’t hurt anyone – yourself included, do it. Find out what you want.”

But what Steve wanted was to go back seventy years and not beg Sam to save Bucky. He wanted to have died when he put that plane down. He wanted to have never had the serum at all. He wanted the universe to have never taken notice of him, for the universe never to have said, “Fuck that guy, particularly, severely, and over and over.”

 

THE PRESENT

Steve ran into Sharon in the hallway of their apartment building a few days later. She had laundry on her hip and her hair down in shoulder length waves. “Hey Rogers,” she called. “Thought you were gonna be my new running partner.”

Steve grinned. “I don’t know. Could you keep up?”

“Men,” Sharon sighed. “Turn everything into a contest. By the way, your 30s music is playing in there. Guess you haven’t gotten around to Beyoncé yet.”

Steve’s smile stiffened, though he tried not to show it. “Not yet,” he said. “Soon though. I gotta go check something.”

Steve crept into his apartment through a side window and there was Fury, bloodied and bruised in his arm chair telling him that there were people listening to this conversation, that shit had just hit the fan, handing him a USB drive and then taking slugs to the chest and Sharon, nice nurse Sharon was in the room with a gun. And it was all so surreal it should have been a dream, only it wasn’t. And once it snapped into place that this awful thing was happening, Steve grabbed his shield and burst through the window in pursuit of an assassin.

Steve hit the office floor of the building opposite his apartment hard, but his legs and lungs knew what to do. He sprinted through the hallways, catching glimpses of the figure on the roof above him. Steve would have said the man was moving impossibly fast if he and Dr. Erskine hadn’t already pushed the boundaries of impossibility to their breaking point. Steve slammed through a set of double doors, pulling them completely off their hinges and then he was crashing through another window onto a rooftop, his target just ahead of him.

Steve didn’t even think about it. This man had just shot and possibly killed Fury. Steve threw his shield with all his might (hard enough to sever a limb at least), but in an impossible-to-track movement, suddenly the figure in front of he had huge, black wings and he had batted Steve’s shield to the ground like it was a plastic frisbee.

The man tilted his head. His face was masked, something like the face plate Tony wore, only this one was black and oval, lacking even a semblance of humanoid features -- as though the man were faceless. He crouched to the ground slowly and picked up Steve’s shield, considered it as an archeologist might consider a bone. And then with no warning, he hurled it back at Steve so hard it knocked him back into the wall. And when Steve looked up, the man was gone.

 

SEVENTY-THREE YEARS AGO

“Bucky told me you went to another recruiting station.” Sam sipped on his cigarette and blew the smoke away toward the sky. They were sitting on Steve’s fire escape, a couple pillows tucked around them so the hard, iron beams wouldn’t dig into their skin.

“So what?” Steve asked. He was not in the mood for a lecture from Sam.

 “So, I care about you,” Sam said. He flicked his cigarette away and kissed the top of Steve’s head. “And I’d rather you didn’t get shipped off to Europe to die in some muddy trench.”

“I could die on this balcony from an asthma attack,” Steve pointed out. “But that wouldn’t help anybody.”

“You think dying over there’s gonna help somebody?”

“Maybe.” Steve rested his head on Sam’s chest. “Maybe I take the bullet that’s meant for you.”

“You dying would kill me just as sure as a bullet, Steve.”

Steve rolled his eyes. He never quite believed Sam’s ardent declarations of love. For one thing, Sam was dramatic about everything. For another – well, it didn’t take a genius to know Steve was swinging way above his weight class – both literally and figuratively. Sam was beautiful and strong and tall and funny and generous and kind and well-muscled and Steve was an asthmatic, 90-pound white boy who lived in a rundown little neighborhood in Brooklyn, his ma and pa both dead and gone, and his job with the WPA barely covering rent. More often than not, Bucky and Sam had to push dollars on him at the end of the month just so he could keep his place. And Bucky was always insisting that Steve could come live with him and his family, that they wouldn’t mind because they already thought of Steve like a son. But Steve’s apartment was the only place he and Sam could be together, be exactly themselves.

Once, lying on Steve’s bed while a summer thunderstorm rolled across the city, Sam had put his hand against Steve’s pale chest and said, “I think I maybe could have convinced my mama of a black boy or a white girl, but the love of my life just had to be a white boy. What am I going to do?” That was the first time he told Steve he loved him. It was also the first time either of them had addressed that they were anything, that this wasn’t just two guys fooling around until they both got married to women who would never know they’d once fucked guys.

“I can’t sit here in this apartment twiddling my thumbs while you and Bucky go off to make a difference.”

“Steve, why are you always itching for a fight?” Sam kissed Steve’s forehead again.

“I’m not.”

Sam brushed his thumb over a fading bruise on Steve’s jaw. “You got this talking big shit to Andy, right?”

“Deirdre said he got fresh with her.”

“You couldn’t tell me or Bucky to handle it.” He paused, probably thought about the smarts of a black guy punching a white guy and amended. “You couldn’t tell Bucky to handle it?”

“I had it under control,” Steve said.

Sam cupped Steve’s chin. “You’re breaking my heart, baby.”

Steve rolled his eyes again.

“Is it only threats that work with you?” Sam marveled.

“Not even,” Steve countered.

“Well, if you go to another recruiting station, I’m gonna kick your ass,” Sam said anyway.

“Not if I kick yours first.”

Sam laughed. “Like you could.”

 

THE PRESENT

Watching Fury die in that hospital with Maria and Natasha hurt like hell.

Punching a bunch of SHIELD agents in an elevator helped alleviate the pain somewhat. Steve didn’t focus on the feelings of betrayal. Better just to wear it all on his fists.

Falling down 20 stories onto his shield also hurt like hell.

And Fury had given him a flash drive and told him not to trust anyone – a flash drive that was currently in Steve’s apartment. Which SHIELD paid for, so they could already be there. Shit.

Steve ducked into an outlet mall store and bought a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a messenger bag for his shield. No fancy disguises in the cards today. He was vigilant as he walked toward his apartment building. He didn’t want to be surprised by any more members of the Strike Team, or worse, the faceless man with wings.

He considered climbing up the balconies to his apartment, but decided against it. No one from SHIELD would expect him to just brazenly waltz into his apartment a mere hour after being attacked in an elevator by 15 SHIELD operatives. So that’s what he was gonna do.

Except Sharon was sitting in the lobby. Not in scrubs, hair not down. She was wearing a white jump suit something like Nat’s black one, with the SHIELD logo on the shoulder, a gun on her hip, and her hair pulled into a ponytail. Her hand was on the hilt of the gun. “Rogers, what are you doing here?” she asked.

A nasty throb of anger pulsed through Steve. For one scalding moment, this woman who Steve had thought could be a point of normalcy, a friend – well, she was to blame for everything that had been taken from him –Peggy, the Commandoes, Bucky, Sam _._ “We’re neighbors,” he said, his words crackling like kindling in a fire. “I live here.”

“It’s not safe,” Sharon said. “SHIELD has been compromised.”

“I noticed,” Steve said shortly.

Sharon rolled her eyes. “I had a job, Steve. I was supposed to protect you.”

“So, you were just out for a run, then?”

“Yes,” Sharon said firmly. “Seeing you on the Mall was a total coincidence. I should have known your running route. I would have avoided you.”

“You told me you were a nurse.”

Sharon smiled. “If you’ll recall, I did not.”

“You’ve been spying on me.”

“You think Fury was just gonna let the man-out-of-time go around unwatched, unmanned, unprotected.”

“Protected? I’m a super soldier, _neighbor._ What can _you_ protect me from?”

Sharon reached out and touched Steve’s shoulder. The sad, meaningful look in her eye hurt to see.

“Were you going to barge in when I had the pistol in my mouth?”

“Have you thought about putting a pistol in your mouth?” And the way she asked it, so tenderly, so gently, as if to say it was alright if he had thought about it, that she wasn’t one to judge. It made Steve think of Dr. Ajayi and he felt unexpectedly raw and vulnerable. Fury was dead. SHIELD was trying to kill him. And he’d woken up 70 years in the future still feeling like Sam and Bucky had died a week ago.

The anger at Sharon left as quickly as it had come, leaving behind an achy, sad tiredness, a heaviness in Steve’s bones. “Why should I trust you?” he asked.

Sharon took her hand off the hilt of her gun. “Because Fury did.”

Steve had to let that be enough then. “We need Natasha.”

“How do you know you can trust _her_?” Sharon countered.

“I saw her face when Fury died. You can’t fake that.”

Sharon nodded. “Okay, how do we find her?”

“I don’t know. But I need to go up to my apartment. I left something behind.”

“The place is bugged, Rogers. They’ll be on it if they hear you in there.”

“You know how to use that gun?” Steve asked.

Sharon nodded.

“Then cover my six.”

Steve’s apartment had police tape over the door. Probably meant he wasn’t allowed back in, but he ignored it, twisted the knob of the door slowly, pushed it open even slower. Sharon was behind him. She had two guns drawn, one pointed down the hallway, the other aimed just over Steve’s shoulder. He had to hope she had near perfect aim, then.

Because Natasha had great aim and she had her gun pointed right between Steve’s eyes. “Why did Fury come here last night?” Nat’s green eyes were red-rimmed and bright. “And don’t lie, Steve. You’re a terrible liar.”

“He told me not to trust anyone.”

Nat unlocked the safety on her gun, fresh tears blurring her eyes. “You think he meant me?” she asked. Her voice was strained and Steve knew whatever sadness he was feeling about Fury, Nat was feeling it a hundred times over. He’d never seen her this close to losing control.

“He gave me something,” Steve admitted. “I left it here. Now, could you both – ” Here he turned his head slightly to include Sharon, “aim your guns away from me.”

“We need to go,” Sharon said. “This place is tapped.”

Natasha nodded and held up the flash drive Fury had given Steve. “This what you’re here for?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, not even bothering to ask how she’d found it.

“Then we can go.” Natasha pushed past Steve and tried to wipe her eyes without him seeing.

Sharon stopped in the lobby and stuck out her hand to Natasha. “I’m Sharon Carter,” she said. “Special Agent 13.”

“I know who you are.”

“You do?”

Natasha smirked. “You don’t think I’ve got dossiers on all Steve’s neighbors?”

“You mean all my neighbors are SHIELD?” Steve demanded.

“Of course not.” Natasha said impatiently. “Just most of them.” She turned to Sharon. “You got a car?”

Sharon nodded.

“We’re gonna need to borrow it.”

“I’m coming, too,” Sharon said.

Natasha looked at Steve and he shrugged.

“Okay. Let’s go visit a library, shall we?”

“A library?” Steve repeated.

“Public computers.”

“The mall’s closer,” Sharon said.

 

SEVENTY-TWO YEARS AGO

“You’re a lot bigger than I remember,” Sam said when they finally got a chance to be alone after Steve rescued the unit. “Or am I still strapped to a table having a cruelly realistic dream that you’re rescuing me?”

“I’m a lot bigger,” Steve said. “I’m here.”

Sam nodded and looked down at his feet shyly. Steve had never seen Sam look shy about anything. “So you’re a captain, now?” he asked.

“Nah,” Steve said. “It’s just the name. Captain America. I have no idea what my actual rank is.”

Sam smiled. “You were saying the military did experiments on you?”

“Yeah, and I know that sounds dodgy—”

“It is dodgy.”

“But it worked out, so don’t yell at me.”

Sam fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Captain.”

Something in his tone confused Steve, frightened and hurt him if he was being honest. “Sammy?” He cupped Sam right over his hipbone, which jutted out more than it had before he left for the war. His cheekbones were sharper too.

Sam fidgeted. “I figure we can’t carry on like we did in Brooklyn.”

Steve tried to smile. “No lazy naps on my bed, at least.” He let his hand fall as he saw someone in uniform approaching. It turned out to be Gabe who nodded at Steve and Sam before going past them toward the celebration under the big tent. Sam bit his lip. It was his tell. He wanted a cigarette. “Walk with me,” Steve said.

“I’m tired,” Sam said. He wouldn’t meet Steve’s eye.

“Have you met someone else?” Steve asked, the horrible thought bubbling up all at once.

“Of course not,” Sam said. Indignation was clear in the furrow of his brow. “Have you? Peggy seems to mean something to you.”

“Sam,” Steve begged. “You always push me away when you’re scared. But I’ve missed you too damn much to wait for you to get over yourself. And I’m not gonna let us have a fight right now.”

“So that experiment didn’t make you any less stubborn.”

“No, it didn’t.”

Sam sighed. “Where are we walking then?”

“Somewhere that feels like Brooklyn.”

“We’re in a war, Steve.”

“Yeah, but when it’s just me and you…” Steve let his words trail away and watched Sam try not to smile. It was just a cheesy song Steve had made up for them, mostly because he was the world’s worst singer. He couldn’t carry a tune or hit a clean note or even hold a bad note for too long because his asthma (although that last one wasn’t so relevant anymore.) The song went,

_When it’s just me and you_

_When it’s just us two_

_Well, nothing can touch us, baby_

_Except us touching, baby._

Every time Steve sang it, he tried to outdo himself in terrible and it always cracked Sam up, like he was hearing it for the first time.

They walked away from the tents until the lights from the party were just little specks of light. The moon was full and ambitiously bright, so they could make out each other’s faces.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asked when they were sufficiently far enough away. He could hardly believe he’d managed this long without doing it.

Sam leaned forward and kissed Steve softly. “It can’t be like Brooklyn,” he murmured. “This isn’t Brooklyn.”

“I know,” Steve said. “But I’m not gonna stop loving you. I don’t wanna stop loving you.”

“You have to. It was bad enough when it was just me and you, Sam and Steve. But now it’s Captain America and some nobody, some black guy nobody.”

“Sam.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“We’ll be careful.”

“I don’t want—”

“Don’t tell me what you _don’t_ want,” Steve said. “That’s just fear talking and we’re past that now. Tell me something I can give you, Sammy. Tell me something you want.”

Sam turned his thin face up to look at Steve. His lips trembled. “You,” he whispered. “I want you.”

“Good.”

Steve walked Sam back against a tree and kissed him like he’d wanted to kiss him since Sam got on the boat that took him away. Steve tugged at Sam’s belt buckle, then pulled his pants down around his thighs.

“Someone will see,” Sam hissed, nevertheless rocking up into Steve’s touch.

“It’s dark.”

“Someone will – someone will hear.”

Sam broke off into a sharp inhalation of breath and his fingers dug into the muscles of Steve’s back as Steve pumped his hardening dick. Sam seemed to know he didn’t have to hold back with Steve’s new body like he used to, a fact that thrilled Steve to new possibilities. He kissed Sam’s lush mouth and twisted his wrist to get that lovely little shudder to run though Sam’s body.

“You’ll just have to be quiet,” he whispered. He smiled as Sam let out a little gasp and a whimper. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” he teased.

“If I had my hands on _your_ dick,” Sam gritted out.

“ _I_ can control myself.”

“Even when I have you in my mouth?” Sam asked.

“Even then,” Steve promised

Sam laughed, his hips rocking back and forth, chasing the friction of Steve’s hand. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Like you could.”

 

THE PRESENT

 “Was that your first kiss since the 1940s?” Natasha asked as they drove toward Steve’s old army barracks. The teasing lilt in her voice said she was back to herself again or at least, back in control of herself.  

“Give him a break,” Sharon said from the backseat. “Ambush kisses don’t count.”

“Where’s that written?” Natasha demanded.

Sharon laughed and shrugged at Steve in the rearview mirror, as if to say, _You’re on your own with this one, buddy._

“The assassin who killed Fury,” Steve said, changing the topic. “I didn’t mention it before – didn’t want to in front of the police and doctors, but – the assassin – he had wings.”

“Wings?” Sharon repeated.

“Big. Black. Metal, I think. But, a fluid metal, flexible. Never seen anything like it. Like him.”

Natasha leaned her head back on the seat rest. “A lot of people think he doesn’t exist,” she murmured. “They think he’s a ghost story.”

“I saw him,” Steve insisted.

“Me, too,” Nat said. She lifted her shirt to expose an ugly scar on her stomach. “He shot through me to get to an ambassador I was ferrying through the Czech Republic.” Steve glanced down at the raised mark. “But you start talking about a winged assassin, you might as well say the tooth fairy is killing world leaders.”

“Who is he?” Sharon asked.

Natasha shook her head. “Some people call him the Angel of Death. The Dark Angel. Azrael.  They say those wings are surgically connected to his spine. That he can feel them, even though they’re made of vibranium. Same as your shield, Cap. In Russia, we do not call him an angel. He has brought only pain; only death. We call him the Winter Soldier.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO

Steve wiped his runny nose with the cuff of his shirt and stumbled blindly down the walking path toward what he hoped was some exit out of the park. He was never, ever, as long as he lived going on another double date with one James Buchanan Barnes. Not even if it would cure his asthma. Not even if it uncurled his stupid, damn spine. Steve was not interested.

He dragged the back of his hand over his snotty upper lip and tried to blink away the gritty, itchy feeling in his teary eyes. God, he probably looked just great right now. His allergy-plagued face, hand-me down clothes, and frail bird body were probably breaking hearts left and right.

Steve stomped down the path, mumbling dark threats under his breath. Which only increased his heartbreaking attractiveness, probably. Who wouldn’t want a crazy, red-eyed waif like Steve? Well, besides the girls back there giggling with Bucky. They certainly didn’t want him. Which – well, what else was new? The sky was blue, the sun came up in the morning, Steve was completely and totally unlovable. At least Steve had found out now while he was relatively young. How sad would it have been to keep searching and hoping for a love he was never going to have? Sickly, underweight guys like him didn’t get love. They got pity and hurt feelings. Steve was going to concentrate on his art. That’s what he would do. Maybe turn out to be one of those tragic, loveless artists who ended up in the great museums.

It wasn’t until Steve was right in the middle of them that Steve realized that he had walked right between two men standing very close together, having a quiet argument. Both men had the body language and faces of people who would much rather be shouting than talking in normal, calm voices.

The taller man, who was black and clearly the injured party in this argument, noticed Steve first, and concern lit up his face like a firework. Probably because Steve looked like a plague victim and the man didn’t want to be next in line.  “Shut up, Riley,” he said.

The other man, Riley presumably, who had been in the middle of what sounded like a pleading apology, scowled. “Look, Sam, I know you’re mad, but you can at least be civil.”

“Alright,” Sam said. “Shut up, _please._ ”

An amused snort escaped Steve and he coughed to cover it up when Riley’s eyebrows drew together into one threatening line. The problem was Steve’s fake cough turned into a real one that just kept going and going until he had his hands on his knees and his stomach had started cramping. Because of course, he needed a coughing fit on top of everything else. What was another loss of dignity on this most undignified day, anyway?

“You good?” Sam asked when Steve’s hacking noises had subsided somewhat.

Steve tried to nod, but only managed another throat-scouring cough.

Sam put a hand on Steve’s back and rubbed small soothing circles between his shoulder blades. Steve’s lungs gave one final seismic shudder and quieted down. “I’m okay,” he rasped.

“Man, that was some fit. You sure you’re alright?”

Steve nodded emphatically. “Just allergies.” (And half a million other ailments.)

Sam laughed. “What the hell you allergic to that got you crying and snotting and hacking like you fit to die?”

Steve shrugged. “I’m allergic to just about everything, actually.”

Sam smiled down at Steve, softly. Like Steve was a kitten he was going to adopt. Or – well, maybe not like that. Something adjacent to that. Like he had just chosen Steve for an adventure.

And Steve had the oddest feeling that he kind of didn’t mind when this perfect stranger looked at him like that. Maybe it was just that he was really handsome. His coppery brown skin and impish smile certainly had a lot to recommend them. There was also the case of his suspenders, which strained against the wiry breadth of his chest. And it should be noted that Steve’s lungs didn’t feel quite so laboriously strained while this perfect stranger was rubbing his back.

Steve was staring.

“It’s the pollen,” he explained. “Lots of pollen in the air.”

Sam’s smile widened. “Maybe you shouldn’t have come to Central Park in April. It’s kind of pollen’s time to shine, you know?”

Steve nodded, wondered if he should mention that Bucky had dragged him into Manhattan against his very strongest protests on a silly picnic date with two girls, neither of whom had the slightest interest in pretending to be interested in Steve. He decided against it. He’d forgotten to be angry with Buck for the last minute or so. No need to bring it all back to the surface.

“Riley,” Sam said, rooting around in the front pocket of his trousers. He pulled out a nickel. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and get…” Here, he looked at Steve questioningly.

“Oh, um, Steve. But you don’t have to—”

“Get Steve a soda pop.”

Riley’s face, which had been thunderous before Sam tossed him the nickel, whitened into a ghostly mask of fury. “You are so childish,” he accused and threw the nickel on the ground at Sam’s feet.

Sam waited for Riley to stomp away before squatting and picking the coin up. He shrugged at Steve. “I’ve got my pride, but a nickel’s a goddamn nickel, you know?”

Steve nodded. “If you didn’t pick it up, I would have.” He wiped his dripping nose with his sleeve again, regretting that he couldn’t look less disheveled and gross in front of this lovely man, who looked well-cared for and put together. His trousers even had a faint crease in them, like someone had thrown an iron over them in the recent past.

“Here,” Sam said, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket. “Your mama won’t want you ruining clothes like that.”

Steve took the hankie. He didn’t mention that his ma was dead. He already presented enough of a tragic figure. “Thanks,” he said. He dabbed at his nose. The hanky smelled like peppermint and roses.

“My mama washes them in rosewater,” Sam explained. “Everybody always asks why they smell so nice.”

Steve smiled. “And the peppermint?”

“That’s all me,” Sam said. “I smoke, but my mama would yank me outta my skin if she knew. Got two sticks in my back pocket at all times.” He pulled out a peppermint stick and showed it to Steve as proof. He snapped off a section and popped it in his mouth. “Do you want a piece?”

Steve shook his head.

“Alright, then, Steve, where am I escorting you?”

“Huh?” Steve dug his knuckle into his itchy eye and then pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“Where are you going?” Sam asked as though this were a perfectly normal question.

“Oh, you don’t have to—I’m just going home.”

Sam hooked his thumbs through his suspenders. “I figured as much. Sit over a bowl of boiling water and clear your nose out from all this pollen, right?”

Steve nodded.

“My little sister gets real bad, too.”

It wasn’t a competition or anything, but Steve would put a quarter on it that he had it way worse than this guy’s little sister. He shrugged.

“Anyway, you’re right in the middle of the park, so there’s plenty more flowers and trees to cause you trouble between home and here. And I figure that means you’re gonna be needing my hankie a little longer. Only thing is, I can’t let you have it.”

“Oh, you can—” Steve tried to give it back, but Sam only smiled.

“No, no. You definitely need it more than me. And what would I look like carrying another guy’s snot around in my pocket?”

“Um…”

“So, I figure I’ll escort you home. You can rinse out my hankie and I’ll be on my way.” Sam’s smile was like a crescent moon in a dusky sky. And he just kept on smiling at Steve, not saying anything.

“I, um, I live in Brooklyn.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never been to Brooklyn.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m afraid I do. My mama brought me up to give to the needy. But she also embroidered that hankie for me with her own two hands. See?” He pointed at an edge of it that wasn’t crumpled in Steve’s fingers. “My initials. STW.”

Steve held the cloth away from his face to see the stylized letters and the little black baby cherubs hovering around them. He smiled. “Very nice,” he said. “Very, um, cute.”

Sam’s smile deepened and his dark eyes twinkled. Steve wasn’t an expert in flirting and he barely knew this man, but he thought Sam might have wanted to say, “ _You’re_ cute,” and only wasn’t saying it because he didn’t know what his reception would be. Steve didn’t know how to signal that the reception would have been one of vehement welcome.

“So,” Sam said, “you agree I have to escort you home, then?”

Steve laughed a little helplessly.. “You can take me to the train,” he conceded.

“Well, don’t be selfish,” Sam teased. “When will I ever have a better opportunity to see such a distant part of this great city? It calls to me. And you’re an expert tour guide, to boot.”

“It’s so far,” Steve pointed out.

“Means you’d be happier to have me along. Keep you from falling asleep and missing your stop.”

“It costs 5 cents.”

“I have a nickel,” Sam twinkled, holding up the nickel from before between his fingertips.

Steve apparently didn’t stand a chance against Sam’s charm. “What’s the T and the W stand for?” he asked. “In your name?”

“Thomas and Wilson, respectively.”

Thomas. That was Steve’s grandpa’s name. Seemed almost like a sign. A good sign. “Okay,” he said. “Samuel Thomas Wilson. Come to Brooklyn with me.” He tried to sound carefree -- fun and adventurous like Sam – but he ruined it by sneezing – three concussive bursts that hurt his chest.

When he looked up, Sam was staring down at him with a very odd expression on his face – at least, odd for a man who had just met Steve a few minutes ago.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Your glasses,” he said.

Steve brought his hand up to fix them, but Sam was already there. He adjusted them very gently on Steve’s nose.

“They were crooked,” he said.

A blush bloomed on Steve’s cheeks right where Sam’s fingers had grazed him.

“You’re gonna need a better poker face than that if this is gonna work,” Sam said. His fingers brushed over the shell of Steve’s ear and the flush followed.

Steve felt bold enough to say, “You won’t talk so big when I make _you_ blush.”

Sam laughed, clearly surprised and delighted that Steve gave it back to him so fast. “Oh, baby,” he crooned. “Like you could.”

 

THE PRESENT

“I can’t say I was expecting that,” Natasha said. She combed her fingers through her tangled hair and wiped at a smudge of soot on the tip of her nose.

“Nope,” Sharon concurred. She adjusted her rearview mirror and threw an annoyed look at Steve for having moved it in the first place. They were back in Sharon’s car now, parked in a truck stop where everyone had just cleaned themselves up a bit. Sharon was taking them to her safe house in Arlington where they could regroup. She rolled her neck in two semicircles and then one full rotation, and Steve heard concerning crunching, popping noises. She pushed her chin to each side with the heel of her hand and gave her shoulders one final roll. When she noticed Steve’s face, she giggled. “SHIELD just tried to blow us to smithereens in your old training camp and you don’t like that I can pop my neck?”

“It’s a little gross,” Natasha said from the back seat.

“Just for that,” Sharon said, “you don’t get to use the shower at my safehouse.”

Nat smiled. “Come on, baby. I didn’t mean it. Forgive and forget.”

Steve rolled his eyes. Nat was definitely going to sleep with Sharon. If they all survived Hydra.

“Everyone’s trying to kill us, guys. Girls. Women.” Steve flushed as Sharon and Natasha traded smirks.

“‘Guys’ was fine,” Sharon pointed out.

“Although,” Nat added, “for future reference, here are some fun, gender-neutral things to call us: homies, pals, fellow work associates—”

“Kiddos!” Sharon interjected.

“Ooooh, because he’s so old.” Natasha nodded appreciatively. “Very nice.”

“I don’t think you two are taking this very seriously,” Steve said.

Natasha shrugged. “Trust me, I am. Someone with very high clearance just shot a missile at us. And your little shield might have kept me from dying, but I’m going to be one big bruise tomorrow.”

“Well, who has that type of clearance?” Steve asked. “To send a missile to an abandoned base?”

Sharon grimaced. “Director Fury did. Pierce does.”

“He’s not working alone,” Steve said. “Zola’s algorithm was on the Lemurian Star.”

“So was Sitwell.” Natasha put her chin on the back of Steve’s seat.

“Then, how do the three most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?”

Sharon smiled. “I’m flattered to be included in your little ‘most wanted’ club, but I assure you, no one knows who the hell I am.” She held up a hand to stop Steve’s polite protests. “Which is good for us.”

Steve looked over his shoulder at Nat, who blew a big bubble gum bubble and let it pop. “She’s got a point,” she admitted. She considered Sharon’s profile for a moment. “So, what’s your style?” she asked. “Damsel, seductress, or hot girl who punches things?”

Sharon turned the keys in the ignition. “I’m going tell him that I know where you two are and that he’ll look like a big, damn hero to his Nazi friends if we can get the drop on you.”

Steve and Natasha exchanged glances. “That could work,” Natasha admitted.

“I don’t know. Sitwell’s not an idiot. He won’t want to engage with a super soldier. Or a Romanov.”

“Aw, Steve, you’re so sweet.” Natasha pretended to preen.

“I’ll tell him I can handle you guys,” Sharon said. “I know the Cap’s weaknesses because Fury made me tail you since you’ve been off the ice. And Natasha’s not the only girl who can carry a gun.” Sharon tossed her pony tail. “How’d I do?”

“Convincing,” Natasha said. “A little too convincing if I’m being honest.”

“It’ll have to do,” Steve said. “I don’t want to give Hydra too much time for whatever they’ve got planned. We go to the safehouse, change, and go get Sitwell.”

And surprisingly the plan went off without a hitch. Sitwell was all too happy to explain Hydra’s awful, terrifying plan to them after Sharon pulled up a report on one of her interrogation missions from three years ago.

(Even Nat shuddered a little at the details and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “If I’m the carrot, she’s very much the stick.”

“What’s that make me?” Steve whispered back, watching as sweat pimpled on Sitwell’s forehead.

“An old bran muffin. With raisins.”)

The trio’s hitchless plan segued seamlessly into their new plan to use Sitwell’s clearance to disable the hellicarriers.

But…well, Sitwell _had_ warned them that it was a terrible, terrible idea.

 

FOUR MONTHS AGO

“You’ve made a lot of progress, Steve. But I think we’ve gone as far as we can together.” Dr. Ajayi tucked her locs behind her ears and the little gold cuffs she had on a few of them clinked together. “Don’t take this as a break-up,” she continued. “Or an ultimatum. I want you to get the most out of therapy and I can see you don’t feel comfortable enough to open up with me. So, I would suggest you shop around and find someone you feel more at ease with. I’ll tell Fury to line you up some new candidates. It was a pleasure and an honor to work with you.”

Steve crossed and uncrossed his arms, shocked by this opening to their therapy session. “Did I do something wrong?”

Dr. Ajayi smiled. “Of course not, Steve. If anything, I did something wrong. I didn’t create a safe enough space for you here.”

“I feel safe,” Steve interjected. “I don’t want – I don’t want another therapist. I like you.”

Dr. Ajayi nodded. Even when she was ridding herself of him, she looked the part of a loving mother – soothing and supportive. “I like you, too,” she said. “And ‘like’ is well and good in friendships, but I’m here to help you with your PTSD, your depression, your anxiety. And if I can’t help you effectively, if I can’t get you to really open up with me about Sam and Bucky, your relationship to them, what happened that day they died, what your grieving has been like, appropriate context. If I don’t have any of that, then I can’t be much help.”

“I’m not trying to – I don’t need help with Bucky and – I don’t need help with that. I need help with – just coping.” Steve grimaced. “With everything.”

“The way I see it, Bucky and Sam – Sam in particular – they are everything.”

A wave of nausea rolled through Steve’s stomach. He swallowed thickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed.

Dr. Ajayi nodded as though this were exactly the response she expected. “I can see you’re dealing with an enormous amount of guilt. Which is natural for survivors. But anything I say about Bucky and Sam’s deaths not being your fault will ring hollow because I don’t have the facts and you have so thoroughly convinced yourself that it _was_ indeed your fault.”

 “It was,” Steve said.

“Maybe. Maybe you pushed them off that train. Maybe you’re not the hero everyone always thought you were. I’m willing to hear that. I’m willing to work with you and help you even if that’s the case. That’s the job. But you have to tell me, Steve. Therapy shouldn’t be guesswork.”

Steve’s eyes burned with tears. “Sorry,” he said, staring down at his knees.

“You can cry here, Steve.”

Steve shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t want to.”

“You don’t want to cry?”

“I don’t wanna remember.” Another wave of nausea hit him, this time laced with shame.

“You don’t want to remember them?” Dr. Ajayi asked. “Or you don’t want to remember them dying?”

“Both.” Steve squeezed his eyes shut as a sob uncurled in his chest. He tried to breathe around it, to force his heart to beat through it. He felt like he was dying. For real this time. The kind they couldn’t bring you back from.

“Steve, where are you?” Dr. Ajayi’s voice was a long way off. “Tell me where you are, Steve?”

Steve shook his head. It was easier just to give in to dying. Wasn’t that what Dr. Ajayi said? Not to fight it. She was talking about panic attacks, but maybe it was okay to stop fighting altogether. He’d been fighting his whole life. Bullies and asthma and the doctors’ morbid diagnoses. Nazis and aliens and guilt. He’d been fighting for so long and he was so tired.

“Where are you? Tell me where you are.”

Maybe this was hell. Maybe he did die when he put that plane down and his Catholic ma had been right and God wasn’t all that loving at all. He separated out the sinners and the saints, and he made hells that were personal and uniquely painful. God had seen that Steve only had a few good things when he was alive, and so he took them: Sam and Bucky were dead; Steve was launched into a confusing, murky future; Peggy’s brilliant mind was wasting away; the world was as unredeemed as ever. It was clever. As hellish world-building went, Steve couldn’t think of a detail out of place. If anything were going to convince him that hell and heaven existed, this life he was living was a cogent argument – at least, for the bad place.

“Steve, tell me where you are.”

“Sorry,” Ste said. He stood up. “I, uh, have to go.”

“I don’t feel comfortable letting you leave just yet,” Dr. Ajayi said. She stood up too, although she only came to Steve’s elbow. “I obviously can’t make you stay, but…”

“I’m fine,” Steve promised. “I actually – I need to go to a church. With a priest.”

“We have a chapel down the hall,” Dr. Ajayi said. “I can walk you there.”

Of course, SHIELD had a chapel down the hall from the therapist. They thought of everything.

“I—I’ll be back.” Steve touched Dr. Ajayi’s shoulder. He tried to communicate that he wasn’t having a psychotic break. “Just give me five minutes, okay.”

Steve walked out of her office and followed the signs to the chapel. He burst in without knocking. A bland white man sat behind a plain desk taking notes on a yellow notepad.

“Hello,” he said, looking friendly but confused.

“Why does God send people to hell?” Steve asked.

The man frowned and steepled his fingers together. “That is a deep question and it has a rather deep and complicated an—”

“No, I’m not asking about the nature of love and punishment,” Steve interrupted. “I’m asking what counts as a mortal sin. What did I—what would I have to do to be sent to hell?”

The man frowned some more, like he needed to solve long division in his head. “Well, a mortal sin is any sin that cuts you off from God’s grace. So, it would have to be a very big sin.”

“Like?”

“Is there something you want to confess?” The man pushed his yellow notepad away. “Anything you say here is confidential.”

“No,” Steve said. “I just – can you please answer the question?”

The man considered Steve for a few moments, taking in his harassed appearance and the desperation in his eyes, no doubt. “I worry that without proper context, any answer I give you will only confuse you.”

There was that word again. Context. Therapists and priests couldn’t just give you a straight answer.

“If I was in love with a man,” Steve said, “if I had sex with that man, had a relationship with him, would that cut me off from God’s grace?”

“That is a hotly debated matter in the—”

“Can you please just answer the question?”

The man paused for a moment, then said very carefully, “In my opinion, no act of love – real, selfless love – can cut you off from God. God is love.”

Steve let out a breath and nodded. “Okay. What if it’s my fault that someone died? I couldn’t save them. Would God punish me for that?”

“My child, I think we need to have a much larger convers—”

“I have a therapist,” Steve interrupted. “I just need an expert on sin for a second. So?”

“Well, mortal sins are committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent. A mistake – an inability to save someone does not meet those qualifications.”

Steve exhaled again. “Alright. One more question: Is it possible, do you think, that I’m in hell right now and just don’t know it? That you’re a figment of my imagination or a part of a manufactured hallucination put together by a punishing God.”

The man surprised Steve by laughing. “Like in The Matrix?” he asked.

“I don’t know what that is.”

The man shook his head. “No, this is not hell. Life is just…” The man tried to smile, but only ended up grimacing. “Life is just unbelievably hard sometimes.”

 

SEVENTY-ONE YEARS AGO

“I thought Morita and Bucky tucked you in already,” Steve said when Sam appeared at his bedside that night after the failed drinking contest. They were in an abandoned farmhouse and Steve was going over the plan to capture Zola.

Sam shrugged and climbed in the bed beside him.

Steve glanced at the door to make sure it had been locked. Sam smelled like wine and peppermint.

“It’s gonna take a lot more than an army regulation sleeping bag to keep me from you. I thought you knew that.” Sam rested his head on Steve’s chest and snaked one arm around Steve’ waist. He liked to kid that the serum had changed everything except Steve’s tiny midriff, that it was the only part of him Sam could grab on to like he used to. “Well,” he liked to add with a lascivious grin. “Not the _only_ part.” Right now, he pushed himself against Steve like he was looking for a refuge there in the crook of his arm.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked.

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Know when I’m thinking dark thoughts?”

Steve kissed the crown of Sam’s head. “Because I know you. Down to the marrow and bone. What dark thoughts are you thinking?”

Sam sighed. “That we’ve been so lucky.”

“Okay,” Steve said, not totally understanding the dark part of that. “And?”

“And luck runs out.”

Oh.

“Sammy, the Commandoes are a really, really good team.”

“So, all the other teams with casualties were bad teams?” Sam shakes his head. “It only takes one mistake, Steve. Not even a mistake. Just the other guys being faster, stronger, or smarter.”

“How drunk are you?” Steve asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Sam poked Steve in the rib, then sat up and straddled Steve’s thighs so they were looking each other in the eye. “Buck made me drink some truly awful coffee and Morita gave me two canteens of water. I’m fine.”

“You had a _lot_ of wine, babe.”

“Well, maybe the wine is just making it easier to say what I’ve been thinking.” Sam’s eyes dropped and he bit his lip.

Steve bumped Sam’s chin with his knuckle. “What’s that?”

Sam closed his eyes. “I’m going to ask you to do something you’re not gonna want to do.”

“Sammy, _anything_.”

“Promise?”

Steve cupped Sam’s cheek, waited for him to open his eyes, and meet his earnest gaze. “Sammy, if it’s in my power, I’ll do it.” He brushed his lips over Sam’s. “Anything.”

“Be selfish, then,” Sam said. “Tomorrow. The day after that. Be selfish.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Sam leaned forward and kissed Steve again and Steve could taste his anguish, his need for Steve to understand. “Promise me,” he said. “If it looks like it’s you or one of us, choose you, okay? I mean it. Be selfish, Steve.”

“Baby,” Steve said. He pushed Sam back by his shoulders. “You can’t ask me to do that. I wouldn’t ask—could you do that? Could you choose to save yourself over Bucky or Gabe? Could you be selfish?”

Sam shook his head, his lip trembling. Steve had never seen him so close to tears. “This _is_ me being selfish. I’m asking you to choose you because I’d choose you. Again and again, over and over. Baby, I’m serious. I can’t – I won’t be able to – If you’re dead, if your luck runs out, it’s—it’s—”

“Sam,” Steve groaned and he pulled Sam forward to hold him close. Sam shuddered under his touch and Steve felt a helplessness he hadn’t felt since before the serum.

They made love – slow, desperate, shivering, everything dialed up too much – Steve’s orgasm like a simmer under his skin that just kept going and going as Sam rose and fell above him, his head bowed as though he didn’t want Steve to see him like this, raw and vulnerable – a single tear tracking down his cheek as his own orgasm hit. Steve reached up to wipe it away and Sam caught his wrist and kissed his palm. They lay on the bed after, wrapped in each other, the sweaty sheets caught around their legs.

Steve thought about that last time every day after he came off the ice. It was like Sam had known they weren’t ever going to be in each other’s arms again, and Steve had just been an oblivious idiot who couldn’t see that there were powers greater than love and goodness in the world. That gravity – just a neutral force of nature – could win where love could not. That anatomy – what happens to bodies when they fall a thousand feet to the ground? – had more strength than hearts beating true for each other. 

“Promise me,” Sam whispered just as he drifted off to sleep. “Please.”

And Steve didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The words were loud between them. _Like I could._

And then Bucky was dangling off the train as it whipped along the mountainside, the air as cold and furious as a flurry of knives and Steve couldn’t reach him.

“Bucky!” he screamed. “Sam! Help!”

(Steve would forever regret that. Shouting Sam’s name. Sam, who was as big a hero as anyone; Sam who rescued people like it was his calling in life, like he was a guardian angel. Sam who couldn’t be selfish.)

And Sam was there, racing to the hole in the side of the train and reaching out to grab Bucky.

“I got you!” he shouted and he grabbed Bucky’s hand and started hauling him back in. And it was going to be okay. Everything was going to be – but then the train lurched and they were both falling, Bucky’s face twisted with panic and fear and Sam looking only mildly surprised as he plummeted away and Steve had to close his eyes against the tears, against the pain, against the immediate and profound desire to let go and follow Sam and Bucky down there, because there was nothing worth living for on this train, in this world of the living.

 

THE PRESENT

The Winter Soldier’s wings hurt like hell. The impact from hitting the bus after the Winter Soldier walloped Steve halfway across the street had nothing on the initial swat of those wings. It was almost better when he came after Steve with guns and a knife. The man was fast though. Maybe not as strong as Steve, all-serumed up, but strong enough and faster than anyone Steve had ever sparred with. There was also the challenge of knowing when or if the Winter Soldier was going to spread his wings again and smack Steve into another moving vehicle.

Sharon threw an electromagnetic pulsor on his wings, which stopped the soldier for a moment. He flexed them and Steve got a good look at the delicate, intricate machinery of those wings before the Winter Soldier whacked both Natasha and Sharon into a news van that had foolishly pulled into the fighting zone. Steve threw his shield at the him while he was distracted and this time it struck true, knocking the mask off his face.

And suddenly Steve was in a confusing nightmare because the Winter Soldier looked just like –

“Sammy?”

The Winter Soldier tilted his head. “Who the hell is Sammy?” He aimed his gun at Steve and Sharon came out of nowhere and kicked the weapon away. A sudden explosion knocked the soldier back and Steve turned to see Nat with a rocket launcher. When he turned back, the Winter Soldier – Sam – had disappeared as quickly as he had come.

Rumlow and the Strike team were on the ground with guns and special handcuffs to hold Steve. They ushered him, Natasha, and Sharon into the back of a van with two masked guards as news helicopters hovered over the scene.  

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Steve said. “But it was him.”

“But he fell, Steve.” Sharon eyes were so full of pity and sadness Steve had to close his against her. “He died.”

“So did I,” Steve said. “And Fury brought me back. Hydra must have found him. Him and Bucky. And they brought him – maybe them – back.”

“It sounds—” Sharon said doubtfully.

“I know how it fucking sounds!” Steve gritted his teeth. “Sorry.”

Sharon nodded curtly, then rubbed her shoulder.

“You okay?” Nat asked.

“The Winter Soldier threw us into a van, remember?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I slipped a disc. Any chance one of you goons is any good with field medicine.” Natasha addressed this to the two guards sitting silently in front of them.

One of the guards lifted their baton threateningly, then attacked the guard beside them. Sharon, Natasha, and Steve gaped in confusion as their rescuer removed their helmet to reveal Maria Hill.

“When are the bad guys gonna figure out that henchmen shouldn’t wear face-obscuring gear?” Maria shook out her hair. “Far too easy to infiltrate their ranks.” Then. “Agent 13, what are you doing here?”

Sharon pointed at Steve. “Fury told me to watch out for him. Didn’t think the order expired if Fury died.”

“Fury always liked you,” Maria said. “He’ll be happy to know you’re on the right side of this.”

“Wait,’” Natasha said. “What?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry the present-day scenes are so short. it is really boring writing things that happened in the movies with just the sharon/sam swap, so i kinda glossed over a lot of stuff that you'd know if you've seen CATWS, which I kinda assume anyone who would read this based on the ship and summary has done. so yeah...


	3. Chapter 3

SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO 

“I don’t want to get you in any trouble,” Sam murmured, indicating with a cut of his eyes the curious faces of Steve’s neighbors on the front stoop. His hand ghosted just beneath Steve’s elbow and there was real concern in his eyes. Steve knew what Sam wasn’t saying: that he wanted to leave Steve’s apartment later without being harassed, without dealing with any ugliness from white people or straight people or any awful combination of the two.

Steve smiled, proud and glad of his neighborhood for once. Everyone might have been poor and uncouth, but they were about as non-judgmental a cast of characters as you were likely to find. “Dorothy’s shacking up with a woman with an Adam’s apple and a five o’clock shadow,” Steve whispered, pointing surreptitiously at a rail-thin woman smoking a cigarette on the corner. “Melvin over there is married to a black woman and they have four kids. And Tricia and Pat, well, none of us have got up the courage to ask what their deal is, but we’re all pretty sure they’re breaking a lot of ‘decency’ laws.” Steve grinned.

Sam's expression remained grim, but he nodded and pulled on his suspender straps. "Guess I can't call it a proper tour if I don't get an up-close look at how a Brooklynite lives," he said. He looked down Steve's street again – narrow, dirty, crowded with kids dashing between the overflowing trashcans, the unlit street lamps, the legs of hard-faced adults whose minds were occupied with money and the weather. Sam smiled and some of his original cockiness returned. Steve decided he really liked the gap in Sam's smile. "It ain't all that different from Harlem."

"Well, my apartment's not much," Steve warned. "Just so you know." He grabbed the knob of the front door and pulled back with all of his weight. It was a heavy slab of wood inset with thick, milky glass bricks and Steve strained his back and arms pretty regularly trying to open it. When the door barely moved on its hinges, Sam reached around Steve (his warm body folding around him like an embrace), grasped the knob around Steve's pale fingers, and pulled the door open easily. Steve looked back over his shoulder into Sam's laughing cola-brown eyes. Laughter that wasn't at Steve's expense. Laughter that seemed to be at the whole wide world, a bubbling up of happiness and optimism, maybe even happiness to be right here on Steve's front steps, his body pressed along Steve's narrow frame, his fingers around Steve's fingers wrapped around the doorknob. Steve smiled, too. 

They climbed the narrow staircase without speaking, Steve in front, painfully aware of his labored breathing. From one door they passed, Steve heard the wail of Abilene's newborn and at another, Frank and Charles arguing about horse racing. At the top of the third flight, he stopped in front of his door – a dark maroon with an elegant black 3L painted over the peephole. His ma had painted that door when Steve was just a toddling kid. Right at the bottom, she had left one of his small fingerprints – a permanent mark of his existence. He sometimes wondered if she thought her little sickly baby wouldn't make many more marks in his short, brief life. 

When Steve let Sam into his apartment, he tried not to notice the thick scab of grime on the windows, the battered state of his furniture, the uneven tilt of the wooden floors, the sweet smell of damp and cobwebs. 

"That's nice," Sam said. He pointed at a canvas on the floor by the window. It was an incomplete charcoal sketch of three little girls – one black, two white – laughing on the train, the legs of the adults around them exaggerated off the page so they looked like the wide bars of a cage. 

"Tell the government that, won't you?" Steve said. He turned his back on the canvas, which was still a source of sore pride for him.

"You paint for the government?" Sam asked. Steve couldn't tell if he sounded impressed or contemptuous.

He nodded cautiously. "Roosevelt seems to think us artists don't deserve to starve." 

Sam wrinkled his nose. "He got something right, then." Irritation rippled across his beautiful features. "He doesn't think much of my ma being a maid. Or any of the black folk doing the grunt work in this country."

Steve ducked his head ashamed.

"Oh, let's not ruin it with politics," Sam said. His smile reappeared from behind a dark cloud. 

Steve rocked on his heels nervously. "Do you want to sit?" He asked. He pointed to his sofa, which was somehow even more uncomfortable than it looked with its deflated cushions and fabric so worn the floral pattern had turned to smudges. Sam didn't even respond to this tepid invitation. He slowly circuited Steve's small apartment – the postage stamp kitchen, the living room that his long legs traversed in three strides, the partially open door to Steve's bedroom. His parents' bedroom, Steve sometimes thought still.  It was a spare, simple room – more function than refuge. There was a small bed with a wrought iron frame, white sheets with a gray quilt twisted into a heap at the bottom, a small maroon nightstand (also painted by his mother) and a wardrobe for his few clothes. A wash bowl sat on top of the nightstand and a cracked mirror hung on the patchy wall. It really wasn't much.

Steve hovered behind Sam, waiting for his assessment. 

"You live here alone?" Sam asked.

Steve nodded. 

"Must be so nice. Quiet." 

Next door, something crashed to the ground – probably Mrs. Worth's precariously stacked pile of pots. Steve and Sam both smiled. 

"Quieter than my place, anyway," Sam amended. "It's me, Mama, Pops, my brother and sister, Gideon's wife and baby. There's never a moment of peace over there."

"Never gets to be lonely, either, though," Steve said.

Sam's brown eyes held Steve's. "No, I don't get too lonely around all that family."

They were silent for a moment. "My parents died," Steve offered. "No siblings."

"Friends?" Sam asked. 

"Yeah. I mean, one. Although...he's the reason I was in the park, so..."

"He did not have your best interests at heart today."

Steve shrugged. "He was trying to set me up with this girl."

"Oh?" Sam asked. There was that lovely laughter in his eyes again. 

"He is the patron saint of hopeless causes, Bucky." 

"I thought that was Saint Jude," Sam said.

Steve raised his eyebrows. "You're Catholic?"  

"Baptist, born and raised. I know a couple things is all."

"Well, then, Bucky is the patron saint of  _this_  hopeless cause." Steve smiled so he didn't sound so self-pitying.

"Well," Sam said, pulling at his suspenders again. "I'm here. In your apartment. Doesn't seem so hopeless for you right now."

Steve's ears burned, but he didn't back down from Sam's smug, silly grin. "I guess not," he said. 

Sam took a step away from the bedroom door, a step closer to Steve and Steve's heart hammered against his chest. He thought gravity might have lurched too, as though even the forces of nature were a little drunk on Sam. Steve dug his teeth into the center of his bottom lip, flexed his fingers. It was the exact gesture that preceded the start of one of his new drawings. There was even that same thrill of infinite possibility stirring the downy hairs on his arms and down the nape of his neck. That same freedom sparking across his palms. Sam reached out and stroked his thumb along the line of Steve's sharp jaw to the point of his chin, leaving behind a trail of smoldering fire. 

"I think you might the prettiest thing I've ever seen," Sam said and it was a testament to the laughter in his eyes and the polished brown of his skin and the suspenders pulled tight across his shoulders and the warmth he left behind wherever he touched or looked that he didn't sound cheesy at all. Steve's blush felt like a sun simmering under his skin. 

They sat on Steve's fire escape and continued their conversation from the train ride – which hadn't been about anything at all, but felt interesting and lively just because it was the two of them. Talking about New York City in spring time, about the shoddy state of the trains, about jazz musicians Sam loved and Steve had never heard of, about dancing.

"Never done it," Steve admitted. "Never had a partner. I," he gestured at himself. "Not usually anyone's first choice for a dance."

Sam nudged Steve's ankle with the toe of his shoe. "You just want me to tell you you're pretty again," he teased. 

 

PRESENT DAY

Sharon and Steve stood on the bridge in tense silence, staring out out over the water, lost in their own thoughts. They had just come from the underground bunker with Fury, Nat, and Maria, and Steve's mind was brimming with new revelations, principally the fact that nobody around him quite knew how to die. Not slugs to the chest, not a plane crash, not a fall from a great, great height. Steve knew he shouldn't be complaining. The world was better off if Fury was alive, for sure. But things would have been so much simpler if Steve had died back in the war, if Sammy hadn't turned out to be an assassin for Hydra. How? That was the question that plagued Steve? Followed almost immediately by an anguished, "Why?" Why me? Why him? Why this?

The brown river down below whispered and gurgled as it lazily snaked away between the tree-lined banks. Steve tried to focus on that instead. The peaceful noise of the water. 

“I’m not crazy about how you blew up at the director in there,” Sharon said. Her eyes were cautious when she looked over at Steve. 

His fists clenched around the railing. He was sure when Fury came around health-wise he might have something to say about Steve’s yelling, too. Steve’s fingers dug into the steel harder. “Hydra,” he said. “Right under his nose.”

“Peggy founded SHIELD,” Sharon said. She cracked her knuckles and met Steve’s gaze. She was dressed down now – no scrubs or CIA sweatshirts or white jumpsuit. Just the outfit she’d pulled together at her safe house before they went after Sitwell. Steve wondered if this was who she was. A woman in a gray t-shirt and jeans. Someone casual and down-to-earth. Or was it just another uniform? “Peggy was the director for decades,” Sharon went on. “And that Swiss guy says Hydra was there from the start. You wanna go to Bellevue Medical to yell at her, too?”

“No, I jus—” Steve frowned. Heat prickled along his spine and he felt like he’d swallowed lead. “How’d you know that?” he asked, suspicion curdling in his stomach. “About Peggy?”

Sharon shrugged. “Every SHIELD agent knows about her.”

“No,” Steve said. He turned away from the bridge railing so he could he look at Sharon head-on. “About her being at Bellevue.” He glanced down at her hands, which she had clasped in front of her. No weapon. No way to ambush him now that he’d caught her in a lie. 

Sharon ran her thumb over her knuckles and flushed. She looked out at the river. “It’s not what you think,” she assured him. Her blue eyes were pale in the sunlight. “Peggy’s my…she’s my great-aunt, actually.” She tried to smile. “Ta-da.”

Steve blinked. “Oh.” He frowned, tried and failed to find the slope of Peggy’s cheek or the bridge of her nose in Sharon’s face. There wasn’t a family resemblance at all. Where Sharon was fair, Peggy was dark. Where Peggy’s eyes were the deep brown of a freshly brewed cup of tea, Sharon’s were like the pale blue froth at the crest of an ocean wave. Where Sharon flushed, Peggy would have gone pale. Where Peggy would have headbutted, Sharon led with a well-choreographed flurry of jabs.

But no, maybe there was something. Something about the chin, the way they tilted their heads when they were listening, the steeliness just beneath the surface. “Oh,” Steve said again. 

Sharon’s cheeks dimpled. “I reveal my big secret and that’s all you’ve got to say?” Her pose relaxed. “I expected more yelling.”

Steve clenched the railing. The silence stretched.

 “Look,” Sharon said, “I don’t lead with Aunt Peggy. To anyone. Same as I didn’t tell you I was SHIELD the first time we met.” She tossed her hair and lifted her chin (Peggy’s chin). “You should stop taking it so personally when people don’t tell you every little thing about themselves.”

Steve scowled.  

Sharon pressed on. “You’re pissed at Fury because he didn’t tell you he had some reservations about SHIELD. You’re holding Natasha at a distance because she’s notoriously private. You’re huffy with me because I didn’t tell you I’m related to your old fling.” She glared at him, daring him to contradict her. 

He held her glare as long as he could, wanting to keep his anger for a little while longer – to feel betrayed and lied to and manipulated because the anger was righteous and clear. But he knew Sharon was right, and she did too, by the look in her eyes. 

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. 

Okay, he had trust issues. He liked the world to be black and white. He liked for people to be open and honest with their intentions – for good or ill. It wasn’t like that’s how it had been before the ice. People had always been complicated and confusing. But somehow, with the stakes so much higher here in the fast, bright future, Steve needed transparency more than ever – and there was less and less of it. 

But he wasn’t being fair. Not to Nat or Fury or Sharon. His shoulders rounded and he turned back toward the river. “Peggy wasn’t my old fling; she was one of my best friends. Something the history books got wrong.”

Sharon pushed back her hair with her fingers as the wind tangled it. “She told me she was going to teach you to dance.”

Steve nodded.

“She told me stories about you. The Commandoes. Sam.”

Steve’s stomach tightened and a wave of nausea hit him. He didn’t have time for a panic attack. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared down at the murky brown water. 

“I like tulips,” Sharon volunteered. Steve looked over at her. “But only the red ones.” She smiled. “And I got a perfect score on my SATs. 

“What are you doing?” Steve asked. 

Sharon shrugged. “You seem to value a lot of honesty and openness from your friends. I’m giving you some irrelevant facts about me. As a gesture.”

Steve frowned. “What sort of gesture?”

“A friendly one?” Sharon’s voice went up on the end of the sentence like she wasn’t sure she should or could make the offer. She tilted her head. “I want to be your friend, Steve. And I think you want – or need a friend, too.”

She looked out at the trees as if to give Steve a chance to assess her, to make his call. He sighed. 

“Sam’s your friend,” Sharon said. She still had her eyes on the trees. “I get it. But he doesn’t know that, Steve. He might not give you a chance to … to make the gesture.”

A lump pushed up against Steve’s throat and he swallowed, tried to breathe around it. The current of the river babbled up into the silence. Images flickered before Steve’s mind’s eye. Sam’s beautiful, familiar face. Bourbon-dark eyes that didn’t know him. Cheekbones gaunt. Face brutally bare. Sam’s gap-toothed grin. Sam’s lean arms wrapped around Steve’s frail frame. Wrapped around Steve’s post-serum biceps. Sam ducking down to kiss him on their balcony in the rain. Sam in his army fatigues. Sam’s surprised face – a face that hadn’t fully realized that this was the end of the line – as he fell after Bucky. Sam. 

“I have to try,” Steve said. “I have to.”

Sharon nodded sadly. “I know. But you might not be able to save him.” She reached out and took Steve’s hand. “You might have to  _stop_ him.”

Steve looked down at their intertwined fingers. And he didn’t say what he was thinking, what was pulsing through his every blood cell and strand of DNA. 

_Like I could._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to give y'all a really long chapter because I have taken so long to update because I am the worst, but it wasn't in the cards, so here is a real short ass chapter. Oops. (Also I know Emily Van Camp has brown eyes; artistic liberties, bitches!)

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I hate proofreading so much and you can be sure that there are millions of typos


End file.
